Sunday, June 24, 2007

Not to interrupt everybody's fun commenting on the last thingy. But for those of you who were wondering, the Suicide Girls have now put up an MP3 Podcast of my appearance on their radio show. So now you can enjoy that. Unfortunately it seems like they cut out all the music I brought with me that night. So you'll hear me introduce songs and then just come right back and start blabbing away again.

I haven't listened to this all the way through. I guess I'll have to sometime. I do remember they were as interested in their other guest Satya the Buddhist dominitrix, as in me. Which is fine. I like Satya. She didn't say so on the radio show, but she's like this very intense Buddhist scholar as well. She reads Sanskrit, has taken grad level courses in India, all kinds of impressive stuff. On the radio they mostly had her talking about whips and restraints. So if you're into that sort of thing that's on the Podcast too.

Anyway, just wanted to make that announcement. Now you can go back to commenting about doing Zazen alone or whatever.

30 comments:

I was unable to download that Podcast about two weeks ago. Strangley, for some reason, prior to that I hadn't been able to download any of their podcasts from shows done after fall of 2006. Then one day I brought up my I-Tunes and your show was downloading by itself. Very strange.

Anyway I think you did very well on the show. Only in California would that have worked; I think the baby eating humor would have gone over less well here in Tennessee.

I always look forward to your next interview. Nice to know that Satya has such interests, too (not the B&D).

read some of your old posts about this "Jesus" fellow. You know, IA-ZEUS (of Zeus).The NT stuff is full of rip-offs (Pirated Copies) of Buddhist Scripture. But you already knew that, right? It's all nailed in the "Christian Lindtner Theory" of the Q in the synoptic gospels of the NT.The synoptic gospels recount similar stories about Jesus... (Buddha).

evidence please. you cant just come out say something like that and provide no links or anything to back up what you're saying)

hi brad. there was this blog i used to write that meant something to me at some point. haven't updated it in some time and i was wondering if you'd be willing to take a look at it and tell me what you think. another perspective would really help. i hope i caught you at a good time.

hi brad.i was just wondering if you'd be willing to look at y blog and tell me what you think. i thought i was doing something right at one point, but now i can't really tell if it makes any sense. another perspective would help. thanks...you know if you choose to look at it....and also if uh...you know, choose not to...yeah.

anonymous wrote: evidence please. you cant just come out say something like that and provide no links or anything to back up what you're saying

What kind of evidence would you accept? I mean, with stuff that far out, nobody could possibly prove anything anyway. I can come up with a bunch of websites "proving" that perpetual motion machines are possible, but do you think they would change your mind?

What kind of evidence would you accept? I mean, with stuff that far out, nobody could possibly prove anything anyway. I can come up with a bunch of websites "proving" that perpetual motion machines are possible, but do you think they would change your mind?

jules,

that was kinda my point. but having said that if they can prove that a person called jesus existed at all (which they have apparently - some letters from pilate to the emperor mentioned jesus)then it shouldnt be too hard to provide some evidence that jesus was in contact with buddhists at some point (if it's true).

Great 2nd Book!!! I'm enjoying it greatly - I myself did not know the story of "Buddha" the person before...he had a son and left without ever seeing him?? What a fucking asshole! What about cause and effect, huh? Did buddha struggle so because he abandoned his responsibilities (though his royal family probably cared for the child well)...

What an excellent place for the witty and grumpy. Bookmarked for sure.

I see people feeling astranged with the semi-porn and Zen mixture. Well, Mr Warner's choice is to condemn drugs and alcohol and enjoy boobs. You could also do this the other way round. Or skip all of it. Or nothing.

Regarding Jesus was a Buddhist:Despite certain and dull facts of Graeco-Buddhist history (Alexandrian times) I rather feel we rather get the typical conspiracy theory and Dan Brown quality of information again. Enjoy your imagination!

And yes: Gotama was a jerk. No reason to leave his family. Founding a world religion doesn't make up for that.

When he left home he was still deluded and searching for enlightenment or an end to suffering. His family was wealthy, so they didn't suffer financially or starve due to his leaving. He was trying to find an 'answer' for all humanity...including his family.And finally, read the rest of the story. His wife and son later joined him and became his disciples. Doesn't sound like they hated him for his decision.

You agree that his original motives were questionable. I agree that he changed afterwards.

I would totally understand people hating their dad for leaving them alone when their were infants because daddy the wiseguy rather spends his day with spiritual wanking than caring about his relatives. Sure, he can save the world even he's inapt to care about his baby...

It's quite interesting to see that we get orders and rules that imply to honor family and such by the very same authority.

And there is more about parental relationship than material dependence, at least in my experience.

Finally, I'm not sure though if converting my family into asceticism is what I regard as family reunion.

Then again, this whole story could be made up to be nothing more than teaching and ecouraging devotion. Even some Buddhist teachers today doubt that Gotama himself as a single entity has really exists at all. Could be a "place-holder" character for certain number of wise people...

hey also people, it's not clear that at the time Gotama was living the conjugal, bourgeois household existed in the way we fantasize about it today. More likely some version of quite extended household, with servants, nursemaids, etc. I'm sure they still missed him but the prince probably didn't have too many emotional and bacon-winning duties back then.

In another sense, we're always leaving home. How do we see that we've never left?

I don't know, I wasn't there--but wasn't this an arranged marriage?And even if, as Prince (or one who was formerly known as such) he did get to pick the prettiest, wittiest, tittiest of them all--most of us don't really know what we're gettn' into when we tie the knot.Mrs Buddha (formerly known as Prince) got to marry a prince of a man, albeit a young man who didn't want to go into his father's business (as the story goes). Despite the concerted efforts to weedle his son into the way of life good ol' dad had preferred to envision. The best laid plans just didn't, and we who have had parents and are parents know that they usually dunt.(Be a lamp unto yourselves--question authority--To thine own SELF be true--these attributed last sentiments preeety much tell the whole of the story right there--his teachings were the how).All of these experiences--as a former prince, as an ascetic pauper, as a meandering middle of the roader--as someone who was baited, bribed maybe by his dad by all manner of perks and enticements and who switched --pendulum now going too far the other way (as is the case of most of us when we are in the process of leaving home and we 'rebel' what we perceive to be limitations preventing us from fully becoming the Who We Really Are Meant To Be.Had he grown up with an strict bible thumpn'puritanical kind of a dad--well, he would have sought all manner of experiences, and if he didn't die from an overdose, he'd be livin' in Vegas, and own 3/4 of the place.

It's amazing: "Buddha"-geeks are really as selfish as I expected. Who cares about my baby, it's DA WISDOM I am after. It's good to know that some of you guys become not-so-deliberately celibacy praticing Internet monks, no child is looking for parents like that.

@mysterion, what are you trying to tell us?

Jesus is Buddha. Big news.

Same human being (assuming both were some kind of that)? Well, not really.

Same ideas in similar phrases? Wow, cultural exchange existed before the internet. Glad you told me!

And coincidence is indeed an invalid argument for deluded conspiracy nerds.

You could either devote yourself to pratice or indeed mistake some random factual historical assumption for "the truth". Even if all of our history is a Alien-implanted projection by our dear buddy Xenu and all our history books are made up by L. Ron Hubbard himself, it doesn't change what you are ought to do right NOW.

For some reason it seems like Buddhists are always quick to come up with excuses for Buddha leaving his family, almost as if it's impossible that he made an "unskillful decision". Regardless of the good that he did with running away and founding Buddhism, he still left his wife and child. I also sincerely doubt that any sort of family system with any merit wouldn't be drastically changed without a father figure. So, let's just say that he did make a shitty decision. We ALL make shitty decisions, and like Brad says in his latest book, we will never ever ever ever know the situation that Buddha was in, or the situation Jesus was in, or the situation Regis Philbin is in, blah blah blah. I'm not saying that this muddles Buddha's teachings, I'm just saying that it further proves that if there was a dood named Gotama, he was just like you and me. Only skinnier.

Gematria, like astrology, means little today. However, in antiquity gematria and astrology were MAJOR influences in contriving the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Myths. (a.k.a. the Abrahamic Religions or Hammurabi lineage)http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/psco/year42/

That the 'difficult constructions' in the gospels happen to be harmonized by gematria is no coincidence.

Jared, I agree that it was a shitty decision...he was still deluded and made several shitty decisions at this point. Trying to find enlightenment via starvation and self-torture for instance. The whole idea of home-leaving was deeply ingrained in ancient Indian religious tradition. Of course this does not mean it wasn't a deluded practice. Lots of meditators go through similar phases even now. They imagine that enlightenment is some object that must be pursued apart from daily life and relationships, confusing physical detachment with inner nonattachment. Gautama too seems to have suffered from this common delusion. We also have the example of Vimalakirti, whose insight was supposedly nearly as deep as the Buddha's own. Vimalakirti had a family and money and neither obstructed his realization. And there's the example of Layman P'ang Yun as well as many others.

Sometimes Zen Teachers MUST be 'in your face' because the beliefs you hold (like those of my youth) are based on smoke and mirrors. As a point of fact, where believing starts, thinking stops. Beliefs are 'crystallized structures' in your brain which are resilient to change. Some beliefs can, like glass, be shattered. Others are dense.

That is why you cannot engage a True Believer (TM) in a discussion - there IS no discussion with a dead rock.

Please read:"Zen and the Brain."http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy/zen_and.html

The POINT of the Haiku posting is: 'There is no 1:1 cognitive equivalence between Japanese and English.' Japanese is a Ural-Altaic language while English is Germanic.

The split between these two language groups likely happened with 'the flood.' That was maybe 12,000 years ago - and nothing biblical about it. See: LATE GLACIAL GREAT FLOOD IN THE BLACK SEA AND CASPIAN SEATCHEPALYGA, Andrey, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Science, 29, Staromonetniy per, Moscow 109017 Russia

People stay in relationships when they shouldn't, people leave relationships they'd be better off staying in.People have children before they even know what being married requires, now they've got the triple whammy--learning to be a spouse and learning to be a parent while they are still in the beginning stages of learning what being an adult entails. Hakuuin's Song of Zazen--as with water and ice, without water there is no ice; there are no buddhas without humans--it is out of our very human-ness buddhas emerge. A buddha, any buddha, every buddha is a human being.

There is this noun father and the verb father.Sometimes the person who is the noun also does the verb.

In my experience the noun got me here, did the best he could with his own personal set of ineptitudes. Throughout my life, encounters with other men who took the time and had the talent for it were ones who 'fathered' me and offered their 'fathering' to many.

So there once was this young prince who couldn't stay. Just could not. He had everything and it was still not satisfying.

No messy divorce, no every other Wednesday visitation schedules. Alimony and child support apparently already taken care of.Extended family apparently in place.This wasn't abandonment with no way of knowing how they would survive.

Now he didn't blame his wife for the leaving, he didn't make it her fault that he was 'misunderstood.' He didn't fall into the arms of yet another woman and have another child or two and then leave them and go on to find yet another and have another child---we aren't talking serial marriages--he didn't confuse his dissatisfaction with another person. (This is already quite laudable in my eyes).

The human young prince was 'father' to the buddha-man. And then look at all the 'fathering' he did!His was a larger family to tend to in the end,including all sentient beings.Maybe he wasn't there to teach his child how to ride a bicycle...but if mom had any sense about her--there was someone who did.

In my years of sitting I have rarely encountered couples in which both are interested in practicing zen. Usually one is drawn to zazen and the other is not. On a much much smaller scale we face this same issue--choosing between sitting, retreats, sesshins, etc. and time with family and friends, and household chores, etc. We each have to find that balance for ourself--carving out the time we need to furthering our practice and making sure there is plenty of time to attend to those we deeply care for.

Besides wives, you should _only_ keep slave girls for sex:And in case a man should sell his daughter as a slave girl, she will not go out in the way that the slave men go out. If she is _displeasing_ in the eyes of her master so that he does not designate her as a _concubine_ but causes her to be redeemed, he will not be entitled to sell her to a foreign people in his treacherously dealing with her.http://www.watchtowerinformationservice.org/index.php/watchtower_quotes/present-truths/bible_quotes/

I don't know about you, but I don't buy concubines that are "displeasing in my eyes."